Then your choice is either a US mega corp under the Trump partial dictatorship shitshow or a Chinese model distillation factory that could turn on you at any second.
I understand that there are users that would prefer another option, especially in the EU.
It's actually a really interesting question to reckon with - can an AI help raise a child and is that good or bad? I suspect there are ways you can use the current frontier that elevate the child's experience, especially when it comes to education and creative play. On the flipside using one of these models to automate storytelling to your 3 year old is probably a bad idea... The tricky bit is where to draw the line? Is using an LLM to collaboratively build a story alongside the parent and the child bad? I don't know, I suspect not, but that is not a simple question to answer.
It all comes down to whether you see time and attention spent with your kids as a nuisance or the best time you can ever have in your lifetime (I am team B).
And as every child psychologist says, "attention is all you need" :).
I think personalized suriveillance and manipulation (thought control, manipulating people through filtering of content they receive) on a level any dictator would drool over can be gotten for a fraction of 1 GPU per person.
This is arguably partly because the EU caps card interchange (at 0.3%, generally). So these reward schemes don’t exist, because there’s no money for them, so why would anyone use a credit card over a debit card or bank transfer unless they need the credit? Most people in the US presumably don’t start using credit cards thinking “I’ll get in debt, that’ll be great”; it’s the reward schemes.
Ex-European here. It is very common to overdraft your bank account in Europe. The overdraft interest fees are very similar to the credit cards here in the US. It is basically the same service but with a different execution.
On a macro level, that's true. On an individual level, your avacados cost 3% more whether you use credit or debit, it's just your choice to recover 2.5% from that back in rewards or not.
>On an individual level, your avacados cost 3% more whether you use credit or debit, it's just your choice to recover 2.5% from that back in rewards or not.
I instead chose to live somewhere it's capped at 0.3% and then I don't have to fuck around to get my money back after the fact. As an added bonus, I don't even know what a medical bill looks like.
Yet many European countries have high household debt. Switzerland, Sweden, Netherlands, Denmark, some of the highest in the world. I guess it has to be mortgages, since it's true they are not that "big" on credit cards. Although Klarna is a Swedish company.
Speaking for NL, yes it's mortgages. And those come with monthly payments towards the principal in pretty much all cases. Also, those being mortgages the rates are like 5% or so, not over 20%. Soll
After 30 years, people generally speaking own their home and that's their biggest chunk of wealth. So basically, yes a high debt to income ratio, but it's building towards wealth and its not high interest debt either.
I'm American, and I don't use the extra cash flow (in fact, I make sure to keep more money in my checking account than I spend on the credit card, so I can always auto-pay my bill and therefore never pay any interest).
If I could get a debit card that gave me 2% cash back on all transactions, I'd use that instead!
Pay your credit card balance off every week, and it's an overly complicated debit card but you technically build up a score for future loans. Also maybe you get cash back on that?
Rational if you want a mortgage in the US at least.
I'm in <other US city>. It's possible to earn enough to buy property here. I already have a mortgage (as an immigrant, building a credit score from credit cards which in turn qualifies you easily for a mortgage is pretty nice).
While I hate that it's like this, you're leaving money on the table.
Currently you're keeping money in the bank accruing the bank interest to occasionally pay for stuff.
With a credit card you would get various bonuses/cashback/gameified returns by owing them money, and it costs you nothing as long as you pay them back once a month interest free.
If you however slip up/miss a payment it will cost you a lot.
Both cases suck, but the latter saves you money if you play that game.
That's from a EU perspective. From a US perspective you also require it from a credit score perspective, which EU thankfully hasn't adopted... yet.
Cashback is definitely capped, I'm less sure on other forms of rewards, but by my napkin comparisons, I do get out more "value" from my credit cards than the fees and cashback caps. YMMV of course.
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